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Sen. Elizabeth Warren Tells Wells Fargo CEO That He Should Resign

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Giving us a sense of what the two main presidential candidates have said they'll do about domestic terrorism.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Just imagine a marquee outside the Senate banking committee room yesterday might have said, big banker gets grilled or maybe Washington takes on Wall Street. Well, the hearing actually lived up to that billing. John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, spent four hours taking shots from senators from both parties, like Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

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PAT TOOMEY: What we've been learning is so deeply disturbing at so many levels.

GREENE: Let's remember Wells Fargo was fined $185 million for opening millions of accounts in customers' names without ever telling the customers. Stumpf apologized and said this wasn't premeditated.

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JOHN STUMPF: I want to make very clear that we never directed nor wanted our team members to provide products and services to customers that they did not want.

GREENE: Fifty-three-hundred low-level employees from Wells Fargo were fired. But here's the rub for many people. The bank executive overseeing them is walking away with a $125 million package. Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said that is an injustice.

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ELIZABETH WARREN: So you haven't resigned. You haven't returned a single nickel of your personal earnings. You haven't fired a single senior executive. Instead, evidently, your definition of accountable is to push the blame to your low-level employees who don't have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves. It's gutless leadership.

GREENE: And Senator Warren called for bank executives to face criminal charges.

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WARREN: The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive fraud.

GREENE: How do you respond to that if you are the CEO, Stumpf? He said he is not a lawyer and so cannot speak to those legal questions. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.